


Lance Hunter, Cat Person

by alessandralee



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Animals, Cats, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-27
Updated: 2014-11-27
Packaged: 2018-02-27 05:36:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2681015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandralee/pseuds/alessandralee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skye brings a cat home from a mission and, against his will, Lance finds himself taking a shining to it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lance Hunter, Cat Person

**Author's Note:**

  * For [demonsorceress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonsorceress/gifts).



> This was supposed to have some romantic Skyelance, but it really turned out to just be friendly.
> 
> Also, if the first part of this looks familiar, it's because it was originally a drabble I wrote.

Whatever complaints Skye has about Lance Hunter on his down time (talks too much, lazy, drinks the orange juice she clearly labeled with her name), she can’t deny that he does his job well.  
So when he’s ten minutes late to their rendezvous point she’s a bit concerned.  
“And problems?” she asks when he arrives looking completely exasperated.  
“That.”  
He’s pointing down towards his feet, so Skye first assumes that he twisted an ankle or something. But upon closer inspection, Skye sees there’s a tiny black kitten standing just behind his right foot. It blends in with his tac gear.  
“Aw, you made a friend,” she teases.  
“That ‘friend’ followed me up a ten story building and climbed on my head while I was taking the shot. She nearly cost you your life,” the annoyance in his voice matches the look on his face.  
Regardless, Skye can’t help but be amused by the mental picture of Lance, hiding out on the roof of some building, lining up the shot with a tiny kitten crawling all over him. She wishes she’d been there to see it first-hand.  
“So it’s a girl?” she asks.  
He sighs.  
“I tried to shake her, which is why I’m late. As you can see, it didn’t work. Clearly, she has to be a woman.”  
Skye bends down to pick up the kitten and check, but she shrinks against Lance’s heel and arches her back. Skye tries again, slowly inching her outstretched hand towards the kittle. Eventually curiosity must win out, because the cat allows Skye to pick her up and examine her.  
Lance is right; it’s female.  
“What are we going to call you, baby girl?” she coos.  
“Don’t name it,” Lance whines. “You’ll only be upset when we have to leave it behind.”  
“Who said anything about leaving it behind?” she lets her words hang.  
“Of course we have to leave it behind. You can’t just hide it in your room and hope no one notices.”  
“I was thinking more along the lines of taking her back with us and introducing her to Coulson. No one can say no to this face.”  
She turns the cat around in her arms to face Lance, and together they look at him with nearly identical pouts.  
He sighs.  
“Good luck with that.”  
The truth is, Skye and Jemma have been looking into the benefits of animal therapy for Fitz. Coulson rejected their monkey idea and Jemma insists that Fitz is not a dog person. A cat just might be the perfect solution. Besides, it’s not like Coulson’s going to make her fly all the way back here to return her.  
A black SUV pulls up in front of them and a dark window rolls down to reveal Trip.  
“New friend?” he asks and Lance wordlessly heads around to the trunk to pack away his equipment.  
“I’m bringing her home with us,” Skye says. “Her name is Huntress.”  
Out of the corner of her eyes, Skye sees Lance’s face peek out from behind the SUV. He looks annoyed again.  
“Absolutely not,” he insists.  
Skye ignores him and opens the passenger door, settling Huntress in on her lap once she sits.  
\----

The first time the cat finds her way into Lance’s room, he isn’t pleased.

“How the hell did you even get in here?” he asks her, before remembering that she’s a cat and only crazy people talk to cats.

He’s definitely heard Skye talk to the cat.

He opens the door and deposits Huntress (he’s still annoyed about the name, but he can’t convince anyone to stop using it) in the hall. She’s Skye’s an Fitz’s responsibility anyway, not his.

Of course, the cat gets back in the next ay, although how she does it is a mystery. He keeps his door shut tight and locked when he isn’t in the room.

“Fine,” he tells Huntress, refusing to acknowledge the fact that he’s officially become one of those crazy people who talk to cats, “you can stay, but only for a little bit. Otherwise Skye will wonder where you are, and I don’t need her pestering me.”

Huntress sets up shot on his pillow, while Lance sits next to her to read through some old mission reports. Eventually, it gets harder and harder for him to keep his eyes open.

“Alright, I think it’s time for a nap,” he announces as he kicks of his boots, although the cat is still the only other living thing in the rom. Early morning workout sessions are a bitch,” which means it’s time for you to find someone else to bother.”

Huntress doesn’t budge, just looks up at him with big yellow eyes and meows.

It’s a defiant meow. Lance knows the cat is trying to push his buttons.

He does his best to herd the cat of out his room, but every time he tries to pick her up and move her, she digs her claws into his comforter and hisses at him. Eventually, he resorts to prodding gently at her with the rolled up mission briefing, but even then he only manages to nudge her off the bed.

She sets up shop on the pile of clean laundry next to his bed.

“I do need to put those away later,” he tells her.

More defiant meowing.

Lance rolls his eyes, “Just don’t pee on them, it’s hard to find time when the machine’s free.”

Lance rolls his eyes and stretches out on top of his now cat-free bed. He’s always had an easy time falling asleep anywhere, and having a cat stare at him doesn’t change anything.

He’s woken up about an hour later by the sound of Huntress scratching at his door.

“Shut up,” he whispers.

She starts mewling. That’s definitely going to attract attention.

“Alright, alright. I’m coming, you can knock that off now,” he rolls out of bed and opens the door for her. She immediately scampers off, probably to her food bowl.

“You’re welcome,” he calls after her, although luckily there’s no one around to hear him.

Lance puts on his shoes and goes about the rest of his day as normal. He doesn’t get around to putting his laundry away, though, and if he notices yellow eyes blinking at him from the pile in the middle of the night, he doesn’t acknowledge them.

\----

To say that Lance takes to Huntress is a bit of an understatement. At this point, she spends about as much time with him as with Fitz (whose lab is home to her food bowl) and Skye (whose bunk is practically overflowing with cat toys and treats). The big difference is that Lance isn’t admitting to his affection for the cat.

As far as the rest of the team in concerned, she just spends a lot of time wandering the base, chasing mice or something.

The only concessions Lance has made for Huntress are the ever present pile of clean laundry next to his bed (if his clothes end up more rumpled than usual, no one says anything) and occasionally dangling the sleeve of one of his shirts over the end of his bed for her to chase.

Mostly, though, they just bask in mutual laziness. He’s still not sure how she’s getting into the room, but she’s figured out how to leave the same way, so he doesn’t have to worry about her getting stuck in there while he’s on a mission.

(The thought occurs to him once, on a two-day mission in Rio, and when they return to base he’s overjoyed to find her napping on a holotable.)

“You’re lucky you don’t have to go on missions, Huntress,” he tells her after a particularly grueling one. “If I could just lay around all day and have other people bring me good, I would. I don’t think I’d even mind the whole shitting in a box bit.”

The cat, as usual, doesn’t answer, but Lance like to imagine that she’s looking at him sympathetically.

“I got punched in the face by a Hydra agent,” he continues. Huntress jumps on the bed and settles into his lap. The laundry pile is nice, but his lap is considerably warmer, so she likes it there best. “And got bloody shrapnel in my leg.”

Simmons cleaned and bandaged his leg pretty easily, no stitches necessary, but Huntress doesn’t need to know that.

He leans back against his pillow, “It wouldn’t have happened if your mum had been paying attention.” The cat’s mother, of course, is Skye. “But I get an apology? No, not even a ‘thank you Lance for making sure I wasn’t blown to tiny he pieces.’” He pauses. “That woman’s going to be the death of me.”

There’s a knock on his door, and Lance carefully lowers Huntress back to her clothing pile bed, carefully hidden from view by his own bed.

“What?” he asks.

“Are you talking to someone in there?” Skye asks.

Shit. He’s going to have to remember to be quiet when he talks to Huntress. No one, certainly not Skye, needs to know how much time he spends with the cat. He’d never hear the end of it.

“Just myself,” he says, although that’s not really any better.

“Freak,” she calls him, and then he hears her footsteps head down the hallway to her own bunk.

He turns to the cat, “What did I tell you?”

\----

Hanging out with Huntress in his room his nice, but Lance’s favorite thing to do with her is watch football, even if he has to lock the door to one of the base’s recreational rooms so that no one will come in and catch them. Unfortunately, she’s the only one of the base willing to watch with him.

He asked Simmons first, figuring his fellow Brit would be the most likely to enjoy the sport. She just crinkled her nose and told him she was far too busy for that.

Fitz actually say through almost half a match with him once, but when Lance started yelling at the television screen, he excused himself.

Lance hasn’t bothered to ask anyone else.

Huntress is actually the ideal candidate to watch a match with. She automatically roots for his team, she doesn’t eat any of the snacks he brings with him, and when things look rough for Liverpool, she curls up in his lap and he pets her.

It’s actually quite calming.

“It’s just one match, don’t worry,” he finds himself telling her after a particularly terrible loss. “The season’s not over yet, we’ll be fine.”

That’s when the bright idea hits. He has a Liverpool jersey (and sweatshirt, and scarf), so Huntress should have one too.

He’s got internet access, he should totally be able to find something. After all, Skye says that you can find anything you want (and at least a thousand things you would never in a million years want) on the internet.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t have much luck. His only option for a cat sized jersey seems to be paying over a hundred pounds for a woman to knit Huntress a Liverpook jumper. And he’d have to send her the cat’s measurements, which he has no clue how to take.

He doesn’t like her that much.

He’s browsing the Liverpool FC store on Amazon again, just to be sure he didn’t miss anything (he’d settle for something made for a small dog, Huntress could grow into that), when he spots a teddy bear. It’s brown and fuzzy, and it’s bead eyes are kind of creepy.

What’s important is that it’s wearing a tiny red Liverpool shirt.

Huntress could definitely fit into that.

It takes a while for it to ship to the local post office, and then Lance has to wait for Koenig to go there and pick it up. But it’s all worth it when he pulls the bear out of its shipping box.

He uses scissors to cut the two threads attaching the shirt to the bear’s body and chucks the bear onto Huntress’s makeshift bed. Then, gathering the cat into his lap, he pulls the shirt over her head. It slides on easily, although he has to work to get her front paws through the sleeves.

It’s worth it though, when they sit down to watch the game in their matching shirts. Huntress even brings the stuffed bear, which she curls up on to take a short nap during the half.

It’s a little awkward when Fitz stumbles into the room and Lance realizes he forgot to the lock the door. But Fitz just mutters something about how it’s not the strangest thing he’s seen on the base and excuses himself.

Lance doesn’t think he’ll tell anyone.


End file.
